


Twelfth Day

by Tea_and_roses



Series: His Butler, Observing Holidays [2]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Ciel's Birthday, Complete, Even fluffier than before, M/M, SebaCiel - Freeform, Twelve Days of Christmas (sort of), a dash of hurt/comfort, fluff and kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-15 03:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5769835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tea_and_roses/pseuds/Tea_and_roses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian attempts to exploit a loophole in order to celebrate Ciel’s nineteenth birthday, but somehow succeeds in making everything impressively worse (and then impressively better).<br/>After all, no holiday that begins with chocolate soufflés has any right to be melancholy, and no earl who can make a demon butler fall for him has any business discounting his own worth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelfth Day

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel--one year later--to “Christmas Manor.”  
> (The proposed effects of a year of SebaCiel... Enjoy!)

December 14, 1894

 

Sebastian swept heavy damask window coverings aside, letting in white sunlight and a stunning view of the wintry landscape outside, and turned his attentions to his master.

“It is a beautiful morning, my lord.” He sounded, even to himself, unfairly cheerful. The lord Phantomhive rarely concurred that morning was a beautiful time to be alive.

Ciel Phantomhive sat up and blinked owlishly. Unsurprisingly, he looked as if he did not share his butler’s sentiments about what sort of morning it might be. There was a note of teasing in Ciel’s voice, however, as he half-heartedly watched Sebastian prepare his tea.

“So I am allowed to eat chocolate soufflés for breakfast now?”

Sebastian merely smiled, looking polite and untroubled. “Do you object to eating chocolate soufflés for breakfast, my lord?”

“I suppose not. So long as you are not growing tired of our contract and attempting to ruin my health to be rid of it faster.”

“As we have both witnessed over the past years, your health is very difficult to ruin, Master,” Sebastian replied. “Though Hell knows you’ve tried. I must confess, I am impressed you still have teeth.”

Ciel looked affronted. “That is hardly the proper way to wake a person up on his—” He interrupted himself abruptly, and pretended to cough.

“On what, my lord?” Sebastian prompted, looking terribly interested.

“Never mind.”

“I see. At any rate, rest assured I am far from tired of our contract. On the contrary—” Sebastian set the tray of tea and fruit and soufflé before Ciel, and kissed his cheek before straightening, “—I would have you know I am extremely pleased at your continued existence.”

Ciel’s faintly rosy cheeks and hint of a smile betrayed his gratification, which he tried to hide by occupying himself with a large bite of soufflé. He observed that a small parcel, complete with ink-black wrapping paper and a silver bow, sat on the tray opposite his cup of tea.

“What’s this?” Ciel asked, drawing out the last word and using what Sebastian felt was an unfairly becoming voice.

“It is a gift, my lord,” Sebastian replied demurely.

Ciel examined the box curiously, turning it over in his hands and untying the gleaming ribbon. He did not need to ask from whom the gift came; Ciel could not help noticing that the paper was the color of Sebastian’s hair, or the feathers of his true form. When he slipped the wrappings open, a sapphire-blue box fell onto the tray. Ciel balked.

“Sebastian.”

“You are displeased, Master.” The butler looked troubled.

“You should have known better.”

“Better than what, my lord?”

“You already know.”

“Enlighten me, please.”

Instead, Ciel withdrew from the box a smart silver pocket watch. (His last had been damaged in a bad fall while pursuing a criminal. Ciel Sebastian had saved in the nick of time, but the watch had flown beyond reach and broken in the street—a failing for which Sebastian had berated himself. In the rush of the chase, there had not been time to gather up the scattered watch fragments from the bustling street for Sebastian to mend.)

“It’s… very fine,” the earl said, looking over the handsome watch with half-concealed delight. “However, I believe my expectations were made quite clear on this matter.”

“Oh? But this is not merely a gift celebrating your change of age, my lord.”

“My birthday, you mean.”

“Indeed. There is a perfectly good reason behind this gift, and it is not to commemorate your birthday.”

“Surely we are not in the practice of acknowledging some sort of… anniversary with material gifts,” Ciel protested.

“No, no,” Sebastian agreed. “I believe the gift I gave and received from you last year on this date was quite satisfactory. I should wish for nothing more than that again.”

“When you kissed me?”

“And you kissed me in return, which was far better.” Sebastian did his best to not sound smug.

“If you would tell me what on earth this gift is about, or what pretense you’re going to _pretend_ this gift is about, perhaps you could have another,” Ciel suggested.

“I can hardly believe that it is I who must educate _you_ on Christian humans’ customs.” Sebastian sighed. “But very well. This gift is to celebrate the start of the Twelve Days of Christmas. I expect you are familiar with the feast days in question.”

“Sebastian, today is December fourteenth.”

“Certainly, my lord. Your proficiency in elementary maths is sound as ever.”

“You’re wrong and you know it.”

“So you reject that you have mastered basic mathematics? I should hope not, having been your instructor for some of the years in question—”

“No, idiot, I mean the Twelve Days of Christmas _begin_ on Christmas Day. They don’t end on Christmas!”

“An ‘idiot,’ am I?” Sebastian repeated mildly. “That seems oddly counterproductive to your earlier offer to kiss me. Unless you enjoy being rather… intimately associated with people you consider to be fools.”

Ciel crossed his arms. “It was an elaborate ruse, but you only did this as an excuse to give me a birthday gift. And I am well aware you are not an idiot. Which is not to your credit, in this particular situation.”

Sebastian sighed and sat down on the bed beside his lord, drawing his arm around Ciel’s shoulders.

“Is it so terribly wrong to wish to give you a gift? I assure you, I did my very best to ensure it would be both thoughtful and practical.” Sebastian considered the enormous wrapped box downstairs (which had arrived courtesy of Lady Elizabeth Midford and undoubtably contained something expensively useless), and felt Ciel ought to count his blessings in that regard.

“Could you not see that celebrating my birthday— _acting_ like my birthday is something deserving of celebration—is more likely to trouble me than to make me feel better?” A beat passed; Ciel frowned. “I know you probably feel very self-congratulatory that you’ve managed all these years to not say the word ‘birthday.’ However, this farce of celebration you still managed to pull off seems to be about serving your own wishes, not mine. It would be far kinder of you, if you actually wanted to be kind, to help me forget about the day entirely.”

Ciel paused and turned to gaze at Sebastian’s face. “And what has become of my butler? You usually have some clever thing to say before I’ve even quite finished.”

“I am thinking,” replied Sebastian, without moving. His eyes remained fixed on the frost-laden window, miraculously snowy instead of rainy for a second year running. There was much to consider, for Ciel could be very difficult to convince when he wanted to be. Finally, Sebastian spoke.

“I do not attempt to make your birthday special out of some self-serving impulse, my lord. Rather—” (he fingered Ciel’s hair), “—I thought to make you see that, regardless of all horrors that have coincided with it, your day of birth matters immensely. Simply because you matter immensely. Your presence in this world lends mine all its meaning.”

“That’s very heartfelt, for a demon.”

“Should I not try to change your mind, or help you see your value? I could not bear to be without you.”

“Even when you take my soul?”

Sebastian was pensive again.

“We shall see about your soul,” he said at last.

It was Ciel’s turn to think quietly for a few moments. His long-held understanding that Sebastian worked only in the demon’s own self-interest was suddenly and seriously called into question.

“Well,” the earl said finally, “I suppose this means your moratorium on the word ‘birthday’ is at an end. Though I’m not convinced we need to tell the servants or Lizzy just yet.”

“Certainly, my lord.”

“If you would ever tell me the true reason for the gift, Sebastian, I am quite willing to make good on my offer, besides,” Ciel promised.

“I thought I only had to tell you my best pretense.”

“Considering your actions, I have capriciously changed my mind.”

“Very well,” Sebastian agreed. “As a result of my inadequate reflexes, you simply needed a new watch.”

“No, I could have bought that myself. Be honest. This is a very direct…” (the contract marks burned for a flickering instant) “…question.”

“It is both birthday _and_ anniversary gift, my lord,” Sebastian confessed, looking suitably ashamed.

“You should be punished,” Ciel decreed at once, with no severity at all.

“Without doubt, my lord.”

“Come here.” Against all odds and popular opinion about his capacity for it, Ciel smiled.

Sebastian responded like a proper butler, which meant he had already anticipated Ciel’s wishes and begun to act even before the order was finished.

 

“Don’t I have some sort of Funtom business to attend to?” Ciel asked languidly. An hour might have passed. Two hours might have passed. Besides which, Sebastian had probably not woken him up on time, on account of today being a special occasion. It was not that Ciel objected to being kissed senseless, but a toy and candy company did not exactly stop running in the middle of December, even if it _was_ the owner’s birthday.

“In honor of the…” (Sebastian nearly said “Twelve Days of Christmas” but thought better of it), “…holiday season, I may have taken the liberty of rearranging your schedule for the week. To make today free. I do hope you can ever forgive me.”

“That was…” (Ciel contemplated an earnest compliment and decided to be predictable instead), “presumptuous of you.”

“Overly so, my lord?”

“No, Sebastian, not overly so.”

“Good, my lord.”

 

When Sebastian and Ciel finally made a proper appearance downstairs, it was nearly evening. The servants were engrossed in decorating a colossal Christmas tree, which Finny had set up in the entrance hall, but interrupted themselves to cheer wildly at their master’s reappearance.

“Good evening, Master!” they chorused, from their various precarious positions amidst the Christmas decorations.

“Were you feeling ill, Master?” Finny asked, from where he was perched on Baldroy’s shoulders, regardless of the fact that Baldroy himself was atop a stepladder. The only thing that could have more clearly spelt disaster would have been Mey-Rin handling the glass ornaments.

“No, Finny, of course not. I am quite well, thank you.”

“Feelin’ down, then?” Baldroy asked, in his warm and rough voice. “’S all right; everybody gets days like that, y’know.”

Ciel laughed softly. “Why would I be feeling badly on my own birthday?” he asked.

This was met with a roar of delight from Baldroy, a cheer from Finny, and Mey-Rin (her best suspicions about the master and butler’s prolonged absence confirmed) collapsing straight into the heap of tinsel she had been assigned to detangle.

In their haste to help, Baldroy and Finny nearly demolished the tree as they half-sprang, half-fell from the ladder. This prompted Sebastian to detach himself from Ciel’s side, smoothly restore the tree, Finny, and Baldroy to secure upright positions, and then—having prevented an array of broken bones and shattered glass from disrupting the evening—gracefully return to the staircase to reclaim his master’s arm.

“Whatever would you all do without me,” Sebastian murmured. Baldroy and Finny, meanwhile, began their usual efforts to revive Mey-Rin; Sebastian rightly determined that he would only have exacerbated the problem by approaching her.

“They’ll have to manage somehow,” Ciel said, still looking uncharacteristically cheerful. “First I expect you to serve me dinner.”

“Of course, my lord.”

“And join me for it.”

“ _Yes_ , my lord.”

“Did you make a cake for the occasion?”

“Three kinds, to be accurate.”

“I’m glad.”

“Would you care to join us in trimming the tree, Master?” Finny asked eagerly.

“We’ll have this place lookin’ real nice and Christmas-like before y’know it!” Baldroy chimed in.

“It would be a right honor for you to join us, Master, yes it would!” Mey-Rin added, demonstrating a rather remarkable recovery time and energy level.

“It looks splendid,” Ciel complimented. It did, after all, and having a servant with superhuman strength was quite an asset when it came to hauling in Christmas trees tall as staircases. “I expect we will join you after dinner. Don’t finish without us.”

“Sir, yes Sir!” the three servants promised, led by a saluting Baldroy, but the order was in jest. Given that they had decorated approximately one-twentieth of the tree over a span of several committed hours, it would likely fall to Sebastian to complete the decorations as well as improve the haphazard aesthetics of their work so far. Ciel, feeling generous, decided it was the thought that counted, and that he preferred his servants having their current qualities over any great proficiency in decorating Christmas trees.

If Ciel laced his fingers through Sebastian’s before they had _quite_ made it to the safety of the dining room, and if Mey-Rin did not _quite_ manage to hide her enamored squealing behind her hands, everyone acted mature and generous as the season called for and pretended not to know any better.

 

“I suppose you _had_ to make vegetables,” Ciel drawled, as Sebastian bustled about the dining room, lighting candles and pushing the earl’s chair in and bringing out courses of food he had slipped away for a few moments in the afternoon to prepare.

“I suppose I did, Master,” Sebastian agreed mournfully, bringing two more dishes to the table. One contained candied yams, more sugar than vegetable on account of their preparation, and another, cranberry gelatin. “Or at least some approximation of fruits and vegetables.”

“You can be forgiven,” pronounced Ciel imperiously, before Sebastian even had time to ask.

“You are too kind.” Sebastian, hand over his chest, bowed graciously, before pulling up a chair for himself.

Dinner went uneventfully—which on the Phantomhive estate meant excellently—and it was only after Sebastian had properly sated Ciel with cake that the demon dared to broach his next topic of conversation.

“I quite like this new holiday,” Sebastian began, in an overly-innocent tone.

“It is hardly new—” Ciel started to object.

“No, my dear—my lord, not your birthday. Much as I do care tremendously about that.”

“Then _what_.”

“Another holiday, regarding which I have never given you a gift before.” Sebastian withdrew from a pocket a slim box, wrapped in silver paper with an ebony-black ribbon, and set it daringly on the table by Ciel’s hand.

“And what holiday is this?” Ciel asked, though he begrudgingly began opening the gift.

“The Twelfth Day from Christmas, my lord. If you begin on Christmas Day itself, and count backward. Thus far I find it is a very—” (Sebastian struggled to keep a straight face), “—satisfactory holiday.”

“I’m afraid I have never celebrated this ‘Twelfth-Day-from-Christmas-counting-Christmas’ holiday before,” Ciel answered, attempting to look disdainful but only barely succeeding. “In fact, it sounds dangerously like a pretense for another round of birthday gifts.”

“Forgive me, my lord, but _I_ think it sounds very much like a new tradition. And it would be entirely unlike and unbecoming of a Phantomhive to eschew tradition. In fact, I feel it is my duty as a Phantomhive butler to see, instead, that traditions are upheld to the highest degree.”

“ _Do_ you,” Ciel mumbled, but he was hardly displeased. He turned his attention to opening the box, which contained excellent-quality stationery on which he could complete official business. Heaven and Hell alike knew the earl worked through enough letters in a week to find a use for good stationery. And, he noted, this particular stationery was imprinted with a black feather design in the corner.

“I shall think of you, _fondly_ , as I attend to my business for Funtom Company and for the Queen,” Ciel asserted, giving Sebastian a well-intentioned glare. “In fact, I doubt I shall even be able to write a letter without becoming distracted.”

“And would it not please you to think of me?” Sebastian asked, in a voice too soft for the servants to overhear.

“It would,” Ciel conceded. He cleared his throat delicately. “I hope you had a very pleasant Twelfth-Day-from-Christmas-nonsense-holiday.”

“Oh, the best, my lord,” Sebastian assured him, rising to clear the dishes. “I am honored to know that my gifts please you. Though really, if I couldn’t manage that…”

The demon paused en route to the kitchen to give Ciel a very un-butler-like kiss, during which it seemed the question might go unfinished. Eventually, however, Ciel managed to get a phrase in edgewise.

“…What _ever_ kind of butler would you be?”

Sebastian flashed a smile that hardly counted as demonic—Ciel would have to remember to tease him soundly about his behavior, once the festivities were finished—and then ferried the dishes away to the kitchen with an inhuman and motivated haste.

The earl was left wondering how it had come to be that three servants, two birthday gifts, and one terribly domesticated demon could have such a strange and heartening effect on his spirits. Perhaps something once truly lost could be recovered, after all.

At any rate, he was just resolving to give Sebastian a proper teasing about the latter’s ever-increasing soft-heartedness when the butler reappeared from the kitchen, interrupting the thought.

“Sebastian.” Ciel nodded in the direction of the servants’ chaotic-sounding festivities. “This has gone on long enough. See to it that the tree-decorating is finished, efficiently.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“As I am to join them,” (Ciel extended one hand, which Sebastian gently accepted), “will you accompany me?”

“Until the very end, my lord.”

So Sebastian ushered Ciel into the cheer and warmth and light of the entrance hall, and into yet another year of being very much alive.


End file.
